


Judas' Shadow

by Fenix21



Series: Rift [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Brother Feels, Gen, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, John's POV, father/son tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 20:20:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5062696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>The betrayal in his eldest son's eyes had not been on Mary's behalf. It had been for himself. </em>
</p>
<p>John ruminates on the damage he's already done and if it's too late to be repaired.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Judas' Shadow

**Author's Note:**

> According to cannon, John did not take up with Adam until after Sam left for Stanford. However, I had this little blurb on Adam in here, and I didn't want to cut it, so I'm taking poetic license against cannon. Writer's prerogative.

John slid the key home on the first try.

He wasn't surprised. Not really. It wasn't that he couldn't handle his liquor. He could. But given the day it was, he'd expected to be stumbling, falling-down drunk right now— _wanted_ to be stumbling, falling-down drunk. Even for him.

Fifteen years later, Mary's birthday was no easier to deal with than it had been a few short weeks after her death. He had always expected _that_ day to be the worst, braced for it every year, but it was her birthday that struck him, unraveled him so that he was nearly useless to himself or his sons, and he had learned over the years to make a preemptive strike and get as drunk as possible so that at least he wouldn't remember hurting quite so badly.

Dean had short circuited all of that tonight.

John had been working his steady way to mellow at the bar. He knew how to get himself there, how to go slow enough so he didn't turn angry or start to wallow in his own misery and run off at the mouth about things he shouldn't. He had no intentions of talking to anyone, wasn't even sure why he'd let Dean tag along in the first place. Not like he was in the mood for any kind of company. Except that the kid was raring to take his new ID for a spin, and even John could recognize when his son needed a good lay to help him unwind, whether or not he himself had indulged in such a release in longer than he liked to think about.

Not since Kate, and that hadn't turned out well. 

It was mostly his over-developed sense of duty, and maybe a tiny wistful hope for a better future, that kept him making the annual trip to Wisconsin. He honestly didn't care that much about the kid, or his mom, better for them both the less he was involved away; but he dealt with so much darkness every day, saw so many families ripped apart (and no matter what Bobby or Jim might think, he was not blind to the fact that he'd virtually destroyed his own boys' childhoods) that he felt it was the least he could do to offer something of himself to the kid, if for no other reason than to keep a little light in the world. 

The bartender had not been especially pretty. Nothing about her would have made him look twice anywhere else. She was pushing the bottom side of forty, he suspected, just like him. She was efficient and courteous. She dressed well, but not to entice, which meant she was smart enough to know how to handle herself with the spectrum of customers she encountered everyday. She'd been intuitive, not at all flustered by John's wedding band, which he had honestly not hidden intentionally, and she had not pushed for conversation. It was when she'd touched him that he'd gone wildly off kilter, something in him lurching to the surface and grappling for this little bit of shared human communication. In hind sight, it was probably just a combination of bad timing, strong liquor, and the snap-bite of jealousy low in his gut at the sound of Dean's carefree laughter behind him.

He hadn't felt like he was drowning until she touched him, and then he grabbed on, by instinct, to the selfsame thing that had unbalanced him: the flicker of understanding. Not just compassion or sympathy, but empathy. Whether or not she had his particular brand of pain in her personal lexicon, she could identify it, identify _with_ it. It had been a long time since he could say that of anyone. Honestly, maybe ever.

Whatever she may have been willing or able to offer him, if he could have brought himself to accept it, was cut short by Dean's whip-spark anger crackling at John's shoulder. 

He turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open. He wasn't surprised to find the lights still on, but he was surprised to find the television off and his boys tangled together like a couple of large breed pups on the bed furthest from the door.

Dean stirred, lungs expanding like he was scenting the change in the air without ever coming all the way awake. 'It's me, Dean,' John said softly, firmly. Dean's subconscious united scent with sound and said, 'safe,' and let him drop back into sleep on a long exhale.

John shed his coat, dropped it across the table with his keys, and went to sit on the bed. He kicked at his duffle with his foot, bent to unzip it, and pulled out whatever cheap bottle of bourbon Dean had picked up two states and five hundred miles back to restock their med-kit. He gave the cap a twist, broke the seal with a crack that sounded too sharp in the dim silence. Sam flinched minutely and burrowed a little closer to Dean's side. Dean accommodated him, folding tighter around his brother's thin, bony body.

John looked at them, really looked hard, hard enough to see the jut of his little boy's sharp hip bones above the waistband of his threadbare jeans where Dean's arm had rucked up his shirt and revealed a swath of pale, pale skin shadowed by deeper wells of skin sunken and stretched tight over too-fast growing bones and not enough protective baby fat. He looked hard enough to see the deep creases between Dean's brows and the almost sickly pallor of his skin that spoke to the anger and betrayal John had felt earlier in his bright, cutting gaze having followed him into a restless and uneasy sleep.

John took a healthy swig from the bottle, swallowed it slow to feel the prickling burn all the way down. It wasn't at all like Mandy's bourbon, lacking in smoothness, and the kick was sharp and scorching instead of heady and warming.

Sam made a soft sound in his sleep that could have been pleasure, or as easily distress over a low grade nightmare. Dean responded automatically, hand going up to cradle the back of his little brother's skull in his sleep. The light from the lamp in the corner slipped, weak and soft, over the curve of silver on Dean's finger.

John looked down at his own hand, turned it over once in his lap to examine the similar band of silver on his own finger. His was not so shiny, not so well kept or unmarred. It had been worn longer and harder than the one on Dean's hand.

John wasn't entirely sure why he'd ever given Mary's wedding band to Dean. A token maybe, something for the kid to hold onto. Maybe as a reminder, of the ongoing fight, of the evil that had robbed him of his mother. Or maybe it was simpler than that, and more selfish. Maybe he was trying to rid himself of some of the weight, loosen the ties, break a connection. 

Dean frowned harder in his sleep, turned his face further into Sammy's soft, brown curls, and made a soft sound in the back of his throat, something wounded. Something broken.

John bit off a half-breathed curse and took another long pull from the bottle, nearly coughed at the jagged trace of fire it left down his throat. Dean had been angry tonight. So angry, and…betrayed 

John hadn't expected that, didn't know what do with it. He'd mislabeled it at first, watching Dean, in the mirror behind the bar, stalk out the door. He'd thought Dean was angry with him for holding the bartender's hand, for giving in to a moment of weakness and trying to hide from his tortured memories in the kindness of human contact; but that wasn't it at all.

The betrayal in his eldest son's eyes had not been on Mary's behalf. It had been for himself. 

John hadn't been able to shake that look; couldn't get it out of his head; had let it drive him from the bar and back here to the motel. Here, to where his sons were curled and curved around beach other with a desperate, single-minded possessiveness, like orphan waifs who had no one but each other to rely on, against the chill of a cruel world.

Or like lovers.

The thought darted in, snake-strike fast, bit hard, and retreated into darkness. The jealousy he'd felt earlier kicked at him and threaded hot and sickening through his guts. He knew it was wrong, to begrudge Dean his laughter, whatever small pleasures he could glean from this life that had forced him to grow up too much too quickly; to begrudge him his brother's love when John's own had been meager and offered too rarely and in too small doses.

He reached out a hand, brushed it along Sam's spine. His youngest, his baby boy. He was the last living thing Mary had touched; the last thing she'd held and kissed and left the imprint of her love upon. Dean was John's pride, his good son, fearless and reliable, loyal and devoted; but Sam was his joy, the last remnant of another life and another time filled with light instead of darkness, where the shadows held nothing but the forethought of a new day.

Sam turned out of John's touch, further into Dean's arms. The thin fingers of one still small hand crept up to curl and clutch at the neck of Dean's tee. Even in his sleep, Dean dipped his head to rub his chin against the backs of Sam's knuckles in acknowledgement of the touch, a simple, 'I'm here. It's okay. You're loved.'

John's heart ached to see it, to know that he could not take credit for Dean's capacity to love with such tenderness and depth; to know, too, that he would always be excluded from that love, apart from it, always on the outside looking in.

It was his choice, he had done it to himself.

He had asked his boys to be this. No, not even. He had raised them to be this, never giving them the same choice. So, he could hardly expect anything else.

He took another long pull from the bottle, made a face at the almost antiseptic burn of it and bent to unlace his boots, toed them off. On sock feet, he padded across the room to turn out the light, stopped at the foot of the bed to pull a blanket over his sleeping sons, and then stretched out on his back on the other bed. He stared at the ceiling, searching the shadows for something— _anything_ —that didn't remind him of the darkness waiting just beyond the salt lines and sigils.

He tipped the bottle to his lips. The night was young yet, after all.

'Happy birthday, Mary,' he whispered.

 


End file.
